23 October 2021

Before COVID I used to travel about ten times a year but stopped abruptly in March 2020. This week saw our first air travel in nearly two years when my husband and I flew to Phoenix for a nephew’s wedding. I’d forgotten that air travel involves surprises, however minor, and that it’s tiring to pack and carry and rush and wait for hours on end.

Hello, Arizona. It’s been a long time since I was in the desert where the plants and birds are so different. In Phoenix the mosquitos are the same.

Here’s a selection of what I’ve seen so far. Normally I would identify everything but I am out of my element. Can you help?

Saguaro cacti usually grow straight-tipped branching arms but sometimes, rarely, the top of a saguaro grows a fan called a crested saguaro. Notice the woodpecker holes!

Yesterday a flock of Life Birds flew by at sunrise and two of them — rosy-faced lovebirds — stopped to check out a woodpecker hole in a saguaro.

Rosy-faced lovebirds (Agapornis roseicollis) are native to the African desert and popular in the pet trade. In the late 1980s escaped pets established a feral population in Phoenix and are “countable” in eBird. Here’s what they look like in their home country of Namibia, Africa. (This photo is from Wikimedia Commons).

Awesome to see wild parrots in the desert.

p.s. I’m 3 hours behind Eastern time. My home world is so early!

(photos from Kate St. John except the rosy-faced lovebirds from Wikimedia Commons)